Putin Assassination Plot Foiled By Russian, Ukrainian Agents

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Russian and Ukrainian security services foiled a plot to assassinate Vladimir Putin, who faces a presidential election in less than a week, said his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

Two militants were detained in Ukraine for planning to murder the premier in Moscow after the March 4 presidential ballot, Russiaâ€™s state-run Channel One television said today. It would be â€œinappropriateâ€ to link the release of information about the plot to the election, Peskov said by phone today.

Putin, 59, is seeking a return to the Kremlin amid the biggest challenge to his 12-year rule after fraud allegations at parliamentary polls in December sparked the largest mass demonstrations against the government since the 1990s. Thousands of protesters wearing white ribbons yesterday joined hands in a bid to encircle central Moscow, including the Kremlin. Three polls published last week show Putin winning more than 50 percent, the level needed to avoid a runoff.

â€œEverything is being done to assure Putinâ€™s victory,â€ said Gennady Gudkov, a lawmaker for the opposition Just Russia party and a deputy head of the lower house of parliamentâ€™s security committee. â€œThatâ€™s why information is being dumped so that everyone forgets about mass protest rallies, allowing at the same time to pick up a few points on peopleâ€™s sympathy.â€

Threats â€˜Exist Alwaysâ€™

While threats to the head of state â€œexist always, every day,â€ the timing of the announcement days before the vote is â€œodd,â€ said Gudkov, who is also a former officer at the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

One of the men was arrested last month in Odessa on Ukraineâ€™s Black Sea coast after arriving there from the United Arab Emirates via Turkey, Channel One said, adding that the suspects were acting on the orders of Doku Umarov, a Chechen rebel leader who has claimed responsibility for orchestrating terror attacks in Russia before.

Ukraineâ€™s state security service alerted Russia on Jan. 6 after an explosion in a residential building in Odessa two days earlier led them to uncover the plot, the station said. One of the would-be assassins was killed and another injured in the blast, it added.

Suicide Bomber, Landmine

After the blast, Ukraine began an investigation and â€œarrested a few people,â€ First Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovskyi, who was head of Ukraineâ€™s security service in January, said today in an interview in Brussels.

â€œWhen they started to give us some details we started to think about different possible developments,â€ he said. â€œAnd you can see how it finished.â€

Channel One aired a video of one of the men confessing to planning the attack during an interrogation with unidentified agents. The second man described the plan to a reporter from the station. They planned to use a suicide bomber or landmine to kill Putin, according to the report.

One of the would-be assassins studied economics in London, where he also â€œmastered the use of explosivesâ€ and met exiled Russian militants, the state-run RIA Novosti news service reported, citing an interview with him on Russian state television that was broadcast in the countryâ€™s Far East.

Earlier Plots

The plan to kill Putin was the seventh against the Russian leader since he came to power in 2000, all of which were blamed on Chechen militants or al-Qaeda operatives, RIA reported today. The first plot was announced in February 2000, a month before Putin was elected president.

Peskov dismissed reports of an attempt on Putinâ€™s life in 2000 as â€œunconfirmed rumors.â€

Putin, as prime minister under then-President Boris Yeltsin, sent ground troops into Chechnya in 1999 to quell an uprising by militants seeking to establish an independent Islamic state in the mainly Muslim Northern Caucasus.

The timing of todayâ€™s announcement may boost Putinâ€™s popularity, said Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation research group in Putinâ€™s hometown.

â€œTo uncover this kind of information a week before the vote is the ultimate way to mobilize apolitical voters who havenâ€™t decided whom to vote for,â€ Vinogradov said by phone.

Putin will probably win the election in the first round with 60.3 percent of the vote, the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation said today on its website.

The FSB declined to comment on the assassination plot and nobody authorized to speak to the media at Ukraineâ€™s state security service, known as the SBU, could be reached by phone in Kiev.

The SBU confirmed that it worked jointly with Russian counterparts to thwart the plot, Interfax reported.

This is seriously lacking in imagination. They should have at least staged an actual shootout against Putin's bulletproof convoy to give visuals to the story (complete with bullet riddle cars, broken glass on the street and injured passers by). Besides, this only illustrates at how low Putin & Co. looks down on the Russian polity (I don't know if this is justified?) as to think they can easily be fooled by cheap tricks...

Use of mercenaries. It seems someone in the west didn't like Russia-China staring in their eye balls lately.
Look at where Putin comes from and what has done for career, he sure isn't one to be taken down very easily.